Something You Need To Know About Those 'Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain' Reviews

Dave Thier
, ContributorI write about video games and technology.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

The first reviews for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain are coming in, and they're exceptionally good. Exceptionally good. The game currently stands at a 96 on metacritic: the sort of score reserved for once-in-a-console-generation masterpieces. The game got 10s from both Gamespot and IGN. But there's something you should now when looking at any of these reviews: they're from a Konami review event, where journalists enter into a set of controlled circumstances and then basically play the game nonstop until their time is up. It's a weird way to review any game, particularly something so big as Metal Gear Solid 5.

You do reviews like this as a way of containing spoilers: plot elements have a way of leaking out once review copies are floating around. But controlling the environment has side benefits, too. Blowing through huge amounts of content doesn't allow for a whole lot of introspection, and a laser-like focus on gameplay without analysis is always going to benefit the game in question. It's why you'll notice that a few sites chose to only use the event for "first impressions" pieces, reserving an actual scored review for later in the process. Some writers also chose to include something about their experiences in their pieces:

Gamesradar: "At times, the boot camp felt like being gifted a bottle of Macallan 1946 whiskey in a frat house and being told to chug, chug, chug. MGS5 might be the most accessible Metal Gear yet, but it's a connoisseur's game. Like all indulgences, too much in one session sours the appeal. You need to measure it out. Savour it. I believe MGS5 has something for everyone, but the game's finer nuances will be lost on some players, who either won't have developed the taste, or be able to discern the subtleties."

Rock Paper Shotgun:"Many (if not all) of the reviews that are already online were written by journalists who were forced to play MGS V for eight hours every day, in regimented timeslots, while under instructions to share only the information that was deemed necessary by Konami higher-ups. Far from being a work experience course, this was a four-day review event, in which writers attempted to complete a sprawling open-world stealth game within a strict time limit. Or chose to do a review-in-progress instead, savouring the experience."

Does this mean that game journalists were duped, or that Metal Gear Solid 5 is actually a terrible game? Hardly! Game review events are nothing new in the industry, and it's something you can learn how to do without compromising too much of the actual gameplay experience. And no amount of controlled environment can mask an actually bad game. But it's still important to remember -- as it is with most reviews -- that these opinions were being formulated under pressure, in environments that don't come close to approximating what it's actually like to play one of these games in a normal setting. Metal Gear Solid 5 is a massive open world game, and you experience that very differently when you've got room to go do whatever you want in the comfort of your own home.

I do think that these sorts of settings are particularly conducive to perfect scores, a few of which we've already seen. Stockholm syndrome starts to set in at a certain point, and it's harder to notice imperfections when your moving at those breakneck speeds. Events like these, as well as the general problem of reviewing games after marathon sessions, is why I've taken to reviewing my games one hour at a time, whether they're as contained as Call of Duty or as wide-open as The Witcher 3. One hour a day is about how much time a lot of people have to play, anyway. That's what I'll be doing when I get my hands on Metal Gear Solid 5, though I may end up yielding to the temptation to play a few marathon sessions myself. But if I do, it will be because I choose to, not because I have to.